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Ceres In The News

Carbon pricing, the bogeyman of climate-change mitigation, still inspires terror in some US corporate executives and politicians, despite support from global businesses and governments. But when it comes to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, it works as evidenced by a micro-experiment among Northeastern states.

Yesterday federal agencies launched a mid-term review of the Obama administration’s emissions and fuel efficiency standards for passenger cars and light trucks — standards that aim to double these vehicles’ fuel economy to 54.5 miles per gallon and cut GHG emissions in half by 2025.

A new air pollution analysis published by the Natural Resources Defense Council, Ceres, Bank of America, and utilities Calpine, Exelon, and Entergy assesses emissions reported to the EPA in 2015 by the nation’s 100 largest producers of electricity.

Utilities are investing in renewable energy to comply with mandated standards. More and more, however, the investment is a way to diversify generation portfolios as renewable energy prices have dropped, and utilities are using renewable investment as a way to meet the needs of some of their largest clients.

If the world is to meet the climate goals set in the Paris agreement in 2015, there will need to be an estimated $1 trillion in clean energy investments per year in the coming decades. In the U.S., much of that money will need to come from electric utilities that deliver power to our homes.

Clean energy is steadily crowding out fossil fuels across the U.S. electric grid. But only a handful of utility companies are responsible for much of the surge in solar and wind power and energy efficiency programs, Ceres, a sustainable investing organization, found in a Tuesday report.

U.S. regulators have underestimated the cost and difficulty of achieving their vehicle fuel-economy and greenhouse-gas targets for 2025 and are giving California too much power to shape the country’s policies on those issues, an automaker group said.

The transportation sector is now the biggest contributor to US carbon dioxide emissions, beating the power sector, which has long-held that dubious distinction since 1979, according to the US Energy Information Agency (EIA).

The US insurance industry, the country’s second largest institutional investor in oil, gas and coal with $459bn in fossil fuel investments, needs to divest or face serious threats to its financial stability, according to a recent report.

For years, shareholders have put forward resolutions to try to encourage oil giants to consider the impacts of global warming in their business plans. On Wednesday, climate-related resolutions received by far their highest level of support on record in the history of Exxon and Chevron.

A month after world leaders came together to sign the historic Paris Agreement, cementing a promise to keep the Earth from warming more than 2 degrees Celsius, a record number of shareholder groups have backed proposals that would require Exxon Mobil and Chevron to say how they would adjust to that reality.

Exxon Mobil has been under pressure for over a year to explain its handling of climate change issues in the past. Now the company faces new pressure to explain its future, particularly how it will change in response to a warming world.

The city is leveraging the power of green bonds by issuing the first certified under the Water Climate Bonds Standard to help fund projects to repair the city’s aging water infrastructure, including the stormwater and sewer systems.

The annual meetings of ExxonMobil and Chevron are set to happen on Wednesday. One thing shareholders will vote on is whether the companies need to perform and publish stress tests of earnings as efforts to fight climate change affect fossil-fuel use.

The Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday issued the first-ever federal standards aimed at curbing methane emissions from the oil and natural gas industry, the latest in a series of regulations the Obama administration is pursuing in an effort to clamp down on greenhouse-gas emissions from fossil fuels.

The Ceres Conference, which brings together players from the corporate and environmental communities, has become an annual temperature-taking ritual for those concerned about how companies are responding to issues of climate change and sustainability.

Shareholder resolutions urging Exxon Mobil and Chevron to disclose more information about how they would be affected by climate policies are gaining support. Climate-related resolutions have never exceeded 35% in votes at the annual meetings of Exxon or Chevron but investors are increasingly interested in assessing the risk that climate could pose to their portfolios.